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For you two arguing about storm/fungal the argument is pointless. IN a PvZ match up, infestors are stronger, no doubt. In a PvT vs ZvT match up they both have their strong spots and can be equally powerful. The infestor is the most versatile spell caster, no questions. High Templar are "disposable" in that their main purpose in modern play is the morph. The High Templar support army is dead in professional gaming except in a few specific cases. KA did some of this, but more so that people no longer got screwed cause they knew what to do when facing HTs. Zealot/archon is now the main gateway army late game.
Face it, the Storm days are mostly over except as a transitionary move. Some pros dont even bother to research it anymore, using only a few unmorphed HTs to feedback or not even having unmorphed HTs.
In another argument, fungal is far more effective in late game for zerg, when there are disposable lings, fungals dont hurt their own units. When you kite a storm, you either force the zealot into the storm or force a quick withdrawal. Only storm chain allows for storm play against modern terran, and as i stated before. ARchons are considered a more valuable asset now.
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You are acting like High templar don't have other amazing abilities, a move that decimates casters (including the big bad infestor), as well as the ability to turn into an attacking unit (Infestor is the only unit in the game that requires energy to have an impact on a battle).
As for walking around with 12+ HTs, maybe they should? The obvious drawback of the HT which is not present in the Infestor is the movespeed issue, but you can always shuttle them around in a Warp Prism (I have seen HuK and others do it, and its only going to get better after the patch).
I don't really feel like getting into a whole balance debate; that was not my main point. But I stand by my comment about infestors. Spellcasters should be support units that enhance your army and shouldn't be massed. However when you can mind control key enemy units and also create dozens of 0 cost cannon fodder units that have more dps than a stalker (+bonus) then you pretty much can have an army out of infestors alone. The other thing which you implied is that infestors are much more likely to survive in battle - they are fairly fast even off creep, they can borrow and fungal stops the pursuit. HTs are simply not as flexible and are more likely to die. If you make too many HTs than the rest of your army will be shit.
Feedback is a really nice ability but for a variety of reasons (speed of HT, very micro intensive) it is better on paper than in practice. Even at the pro level from what I've seen. Warp prism buff might remedy this somewhat. I hope it does.
Is there a reason why it's important to keep VRs alive but not important to keep archons and immortals alive? They are all roughly the same cost. Pulling back a low shield archon will give you essentially an entirely fresh one after shields recharge, and likewise the Immortal will regain powerful tanking ability due to the passive. To play devil's advocate for a moment, you could argue that it is more important to keep those 2 alive than it is a void ray.
They morph archons because archons are good. Some players won't research storm, because against some army types you don't want it. Generally though, if you are facing bio or heavy ling play then I feel it would be a mistake not to get storm. Implying that storm is a weak ability seems very silly to me.
Acceleration buff is pretty critical given that a primary complaint of how the mothership operates is that it is incredibly lacking in mobility. A mothership is still an extremely powerful and versatile unit.
All units can be pulled back when hurt. Void ray is different in that, like most flying units, it can be used to harass and can function independently of your main army. The charge mechanic adds another level to it. I do hope though that with the WP buff, immortals and archons will be dropped more in the future.
Re archons, maybe I'm thinking about BW too much but in BW it was almost always worth it to research storm. Yes, archons were made too but unless you were about to die to mutas right now, you always kept a couple of HTs around for storm.
I still don't see the MS becoming part of standard play. Even with the buff it will still be one of the slowest units in the game.
If Stargate is a relatively weak strategy, then instead of pointing to 2 low level pros playing a non-serious game (tyler wanted to let haypro win to keep his seed), could you address why the player who is widely considered the best protoss in the world has been opening stargate against zerg nearly every game for months?
I already said that zergs have a relatively weak anti-air in the early game. Stargate tech is sufficient to exploit certain timing windows but will not really win you games.
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On August 30 2011 09:05 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2011 05:22 Morphling_ wrote:
(Infestor is the only unit in the game that requires energy to have an impact on a battle).
Ravens.
Ravens detect. The point about infestors stand.
In addition, for the whole "Oh my god high templars are super weak" argument: In the current metagame, high templars are maybe not the best AoE unit but that does hardly make them weak. Ever tried chain storming a roach ball off creep? They move so incredibly slow that even though they are "beefy tank units that can just shrug the damage off", they get softened up so much that a standard gateway army - that is supposedly weak against roaches - will laugh all over them. Do you realise how much apm it actually takes to NP every HT inside a protoss ball WHILE fungaling them to secure vs blinkstalker and without getting a single feedback in the process ruining your "mass NP"?
And with respects to stargate play, I hugely disgaree with your point on that as well. Void rays are simply amazing. The only way to costefficiently combat a big pack of void rays is with hydralisks - a unit that zerg is hesitant to get, because IF they get them and the protoss gets colossi around the same time, they are in such a bad spot. Corruptors get annihilated by void rays - so much so that its not even funny. You almost need double the amount of corruptors to fight void rays, which is both more expensive and more supply heavy. Add in 2 or 3 carriers that the corruptors must focusfire first - and keep in mind the carriers will be in the back of the army - the void rays will be almost fully charged by the time the carriers are dead, ripping the corruptors apart. As a side bonus, carriers are insanely strong vs hydralisks. Stargate heavy play is awesome but tricky to pull off. Much like mass mutalisk play or mass banshee / viking play.
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On August 30 2011 16:54 Thraundil wrote:
Ravens detect. The point about infestors stand.
In addition, for the whole "Oh my god high templars are super weak" argument: In the current metagame, high templars are maybe not the best AoE unit but that does hardly make them weak. Ever tried chain storming a roach ball off creep? They move so incredibly slow that even though they are "beefy tank units that can just shrug the damage off", they get softened up so much that a standard gateway army - that is supposedly weak against roaches - will laugh all over them. Do you realise how much apm it actually takes to NP every HT inside a protoss ball WHILE fungaling them to secure vs blinkstalker and without getting a single feedback in the process ruining your "mass NP"?
And with respects to stargate play, I hugely disgaree with your point on that as well. Void rays are simply amazing. The only way to costefficiently combat a big pack of void rays is with hydralisks - a unit that zerg is hesitant to get, because IF they get them and the protoss gets colossi around the same time, they are in such a bad spot. Corruptors get annihilated by void rays - so much so that its not even funny. You almost need double the amount of corruptors to fight void rays, which is both more expensive and more supply heavy. Add in 2 or 3 carriers that the corruptors must focusfire first - and keep in mind the carriers will be in the back of the army - the void rays will be almost fully charged by the time the carriers are dead, ripping the corruptors apart. As a side bonus, carriers are insanely strong vs hydralisks. Stargate heavy play is awesome but tricky to pull off. Much like mass mutalisk play or mass banshee / viking play.
Actually, I have tried that. They burrow and outheal storm, it's pretty funny. Templar are simply not any good at all against Zerg. They were good when Zerg used mutalisks and zerglings but not now. They do nothing to roaches or brood lords, and they don't function well as an infestor counter. They're horrifically easy to snipe and you have to spend 100 APM keeping them split up or the Zerg can just erase them all with a few fungals.
It's pretty easy to mass parasite Protoss when infestors move faster than templar and all their spells have the same range as feedback, just stop them out of range and tell them to cast their spells, it's impossible for the Protoss to feedback them before they cast.
As for corruptors - so what? Who uses corruptors? Lots of colossus is easy to counter, just make 15 infestors and NP/fungal spam the ball to death. You'll lose a few to colossus shots but you're zerg, you always have way more resources than the opponent. Protoss is all about killing the Zerg before they get a critical mass of infestors because you cannot do anything about this unit if they have a bunch of them. Late game Protoss is completely hopeless vs Zerg as Zerg will make brood lords and fungal completely demolishes the two counter units, namely blink stalkers and void rays.
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Ever tried microing void rays and adding just one or two carriers to the mix? Fungal demolishes void ray balls, but if you spread them out fungals are suddenly a terrible choice - but you still must spam them or you get raped by the void rays, who incidentally deal bonus damage to infestors. Sure, a big clumped up ball of protoss units get killed by fungal - surprise. Try micro 
Also, burrowed roaches might outheal a storm, but they wont outheal the stalker ball firing away at them at the same time.
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Hellions with BFH can still 2 shot zerglings.. I didn't understand the part where zerglings are better off with the new patch!?? They still die to 2 shots.. and this is not splash this is AOE.. so damage is dealt uniformly ...
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I dont know if people have noticed this but here it is. The storm has been nerfed almost to death and people produce very few HT for storm but instead for archon. It not like before where there used to be a large amount of HTs. Now most Protoss will have max 3 HTs for storm cos cannot be afforded and its not cost effective. But here is the catch >> Terran actually produce a lot of ghost now days. We see Terrans have an average of 6 ghost or more in their armies now far more outwaying the HTs. So the game has turned from a HT "storm party" to a Ghost "EMP carnaval".
I hope Blizz identify it and changes it a bit whether one gets a nerf or the other gets a buff.
But there is a distinct window open of disbalance here.
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I love how protoss have no idea about the level of micro a T needs. TLO played random for a long time at pro level and I've seen him say T is the most micro intensive race by far (not harder - just more micro). I seriously think most pros would agree (maybe except for super biased pros like Idra)
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Just because you have to do a greater volume of micro as terran doesn't mean that the micro is more difficult than what protoss need to do.
What does terran have to do against protoss?
Fly a dropship at the protoss main, drop off some bio, stim and shift-click some buildings (or a-move at a mineral line). If necessary select the bio, click them into the dropship, then fly it away.
Cloak ghosts, run in and EMP the deathball. Run ghosts away. Stim and at-move in at the bioball with medivacs following, then start stutter-stepping backwards (or forwards if the ball tries to retreat). Shift-click Target-fire vikings on colossus. Back vikings out if main army is cut off by forcefields due to bad EMP.
Ya, you have to do multiple things, but none of them require any real finesse or precision and the timings are pretty lose. There's no TvP equivalent to "I need to place 6 perfect forcefields in less than two seconds or die right here." There's no TvP equivalent to "I need to individually target 5 ghosts for feedback while keeping my templar spread or my whole army will be EMP'd". No TvP equivalent to "I need to fly this warp prism just alongside the kiting bio, drop templar, storm, move prism forward, drop templar, storm, move prism forward..."
Protoss have fewer individual things that benefit from micro, but all of those things have to micro'd with great precision, finesse, and timing or they're completely ineffective or even counter-productive (e.g. bad FF protecting the bio from charging zealots; bad storm killing your own zealots).
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you can retreat your workers.
Just stop+f1(hold) click all around your base with the minimap. Just get used to it, it takes about 3 seconds to do and it works wonders against banelings too
Oh and by the way, protoss' new composition zealot+archons and HT vs zerg is simply deadly, especially when they add voidrays in the late game (I'm talking about after a Forge fe + single VR, so they already have a SG) Don't give me that HT and VR are underpowered T_T
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Personally I think everyone fretting over PvZ or PvP (with regards to the blink change) is insane.
PvT is the matchup I think it will affect the most. Currently blink stalkers (or blink+obs) is the safest, most reliable way to punish a terran going gasless expansion. Usually the early attacks from blink come at a very specific timing when a gasless-expanding terran will not have marauders out yet, etc. With 30 (or 20 if ur fully chronoing) seconds more to prepare, I'm pretty certain we're going to see many terrans taking gasless expansions a lot more often as it will be that much more safe.
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On August 30 2011 16:54 Thraundil wrote:
carriers are insanely strong vs hydralisks. Stargate heavy play is awesome but tricky to pull off. Much like mass mutalisk play or mass banshee / viking play.
Strong vs hydras? Have you ever tried using carriers vs 3/3 hydras? Any smart Zerg player would target interceptors before the actual carrier. They dps so hard that you don't lose many hydras at all.
I lol when toss players go mass stargate because they think no Zerg will mass hydras. And I would like to see someone legitimately go carrier tech and then switch to robo without dying.
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On August 31 2011 00:32 galivet wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Just because you have to do a greater volume of micro as terran doesn't mean that the micro is more difficult than what protoss need to do.
What does terran have to do against protoss?
Fly a dropship at the protoss main, drop off some bio, stim and shift-click some buildings (or a-move at a mineral line). If necessary select the bio, click them into the dropship, then fly it away.
Cloak ghosts, run in and EMP the deathball. Run ghosts away. Stim and at-move in at the bioball with medivacs following, then start stutter-stepping backwards (or forwards if the ball tries to retreat). Shift-click Target-fire vikings on colossus. Back vikings out if main army is cut off by forcefields due to bad EMP.
Ya, you have to do multiple things, but none of them require any real finesse or precision and the timings are pretty lose. There's no TvP equivalent to "I need to place 6 perfect forcefields in less than two seconds or die right here." There's no TvP equivalent to "I need to individually target 5 ghosts for feedback while keeping my templar spread or my whole army will be EMP'd". No TvP equivalent to "I need to fly this warp prism just alongside the kiting bio, drop templar, storm, move prism forward, drop templar, storm, move prism forward..."
Protoss have fewer individual things that benefit from micro, but all of those things have to micro'd with great precision, finesse, and timing or they're completely ineffective or even counter-productive (e.g. bad FF protecting the bio from charging zealots; bad storm killing your own zealots).
I dont mean to insult you but you dont have a clue and your post shows it. All that viking focusing, bioball-stutter and emp firing is the easy part, trust me. I will try to describe the complexity but I doubt you'll understand it until you try playing T at a "medium" level. The hard part TvP can be described as having a "living" concave of bio dodging splash from collossus and storm while moving squads of marauders to snipe colossus from sides and kiting smaller bioballs against speedlots. And yes then there's the drops and vikings and whatnot that you have to manage simultaneously.
I'm not saying P has an easy time to defend against early bio pushes or drops - I play toss at a low diamond level and I have a hard time defending stim timings as well but I know you cant compare deathball micro to bioball micro.
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On August 31 2011 00:43 -orb- wrote:
Personally I think everyone fretting over PvZ or PvP (with regards to the blink change) is insane.
PvT is the matchup I think it will affect the most. Currently blink stalkers (or blink+obs) is the safest, most reliable way to punish a terran going gasless expansion. Usually the early attacks from blink come at a very specific timing when a gasless-expanding terran will not have marauders out yet, etc. With 30 (or 20 if ur fully chronoing) seconds more to prepare, I'm pretty certain we're going to see many terrans taking gasless expansions a lot more often as it will be that much more safe.
I'm more worried about PvT for an entirely different reason. I have always advocated going blink before charge when playing a macro game in order to defend better vs multi-prong attacks when taking a third base. With the new patch, there will be a 30 second window where I would've had charge done in the current patch but not in the new one. The delay on blink might force everyone to go charge first to be safe.
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On August 31 2011 01:09 TheDraken wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2011 16:54 Thraundil wrote:
carriers are insanely strong vs hydralisks. Stargate heavy play is awesome but tricky to pull off. Much like mass mutalisk play or mass banshee / viking play. Strong vs hydras? Have you ever tried using carriers vs 3/3 hydras? Any smart Zerg player would target interceptors before the actual carrier. They dps so hard that you don't lose many hydras at all. I lol when toss players go mass stargate because they think no Zerg will mass hydras. And I would like to see someone legitimately go carrier tech and then switch to robo without dying.
Usually when I mess about on my high diamond protoss smurf account and go double stargate off 2 bases, and get void rays, carriers and lots of speedzealots. Void rays counter every unit once charged, and if these 3/3 hydras that you're talking about focus interceptors, they will then be faced with charged void rays, and carriers that can restock their weapons. And hydralisks need an efficient meatshield to defend vs zealots, no matter what unit you choose it either cuts back on your hydra count, or gets countered by the zealots themselves.
I am not saying stargate is overpowered, but I am saying that the claim that "stargate tech is the worst and its totally useless" is the same as saying "mass mutalisks can never work in ZvP, ever". Both unit setups are mega bad if you countered.
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I like the prism change, but we still don't have anything that is worth dropping until late game, when they probably have a strong economy anyways.
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On August 31 2011 05:46 Revelatus wrote:
I like the prism change, but we still don't have anything that is worth dropping until late game, when they probably have a strong economy anyways.
Lately there has been evidence to the contrary with several skilled players making effective use of zealot drops to pin opponents' armies, snipe tech structures, and force mistakes. Seems like a decent way to dump excess minerals during the period of the game when you aren't building colossus for whatever reason.
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On August 31 2011 00:43 -orb- wrote:
Personally I think everyone fretting over PvZ or PvP (with regards to the blink change) is insane.
PvT is the matchup I think it will affect the most. Currently blink stalkers (or blink+obs) is the safest, most reliable way to punish a terran going gasless expansion. Usually the early attacks from blink come at a very specific timing when a gasless-expanding terran will not have marauders out yet, etc. With 30 (or 20 if ur fully chronoing) seconds more to prepare, I'm pretty certain we're going to see many terrans taking gasless expansions a lot more often as it will be that much more safe.
Agreed. I think this is almost exclusively to address powerful blink-stalker openings on Tal'Darim etc. It's incredibly easy to win as a Protoss player on this map vs a gasless expand.
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On August 31 2011 00:32 galivet wrote:
Just because you have to do a greater volume of micro as terran doesn't mean that the micro is more difficult than what protoss need to do.
What does terran have to do against protoss?
Fly a dropship at the protoss main, drop off some bio, stim and shift-click some buildings (or a-move at a mineral line). If necessary select the bio, click them into the dropship, then fly it away.
Cloak ghosts, run in and EMP the deathball. Run ghosts away. Stim and at-move in at the bioball with medivacs following, then start stutter-stepping backwards (or forwards if the ball tries to retreat). Shift-click Target-fire vikings on colossus. Back vikings out if main army is cut off by forcefields due to bad EMP.
Ya, you have to do multiple things, but none of them require any real finesse or precision and the timings are pretty lose. There's no TvP equivalent to "I need to place 6 perfect forcefields in less than two seconds or die right here." There's no TvP equivalent to "I need to individually target 5 ghosts for feedback while keeping my templar spread or my whole army will be EMP'd". No TvP equivalent to "I need to fly this warp prism just alongside the kiting bio, drop templar, storm, move prism forward, drop templar, storm, move prism forward..."
Protoss have fewer individual things that benefit from micro, but all of those things have to micro'd with great precision, finesse, and timing or they're completely ineffective or even counter-productive (e.g. bad FF protecting the bio from charging zealots; bad storm killing your own zealots).
Hahaha, I love when people do this. It's not just Protoss (I see Zergs and Terrans doing it too, but it often times seems to be Protoss), but I just think it's really funny when they post silly things like this where they pull out their thesaurus to sound smart while talking about their race and then they use their actual vocab when talking about other races.
First off, if you get your whole army and all your spellcasters EMPed by cloaked Ghosts, here are some tips:
- Spread out your casters
- Get a single Observer and place it a little bit ahead of your army
- If you see a group of cloaked Ghosts moving towards your army, attack them with your Stalkers/Colossi/Zealot OR for you Protoss with super-gosu-awesome micro, take a single High Templar and feedback the Ghosts.
- 25/75 shouldn't be "too expensive" as a response to cloak, as Terrans are investing either 150/150 or 200/200 into cloak depending on Ghosts or Banshees respectively
- If that still seems like you are being forced to produce more observers then you'd like, think of it like this:
Terran gets cloak tech, if Protoss doesn't respond to cloak tech, Protoss loses.
Alternatively: Protoss gets cloak tech, if Terran doesn't respond to cloak tech, Terran loses.
That's just how StarCraft 2 works when it comes to cloak tech (whether it's Burrow, Ghosts, or Dark Templar), of course the only one that can consistently be cloaked AND attack is the Dark Templar...
As far as drop micro not being difficult, go watch sixjaxMajOr against EGAxslav on Xel'Naga Caverns I believe a couple MLGs ago. MajOr is constantly dropping in two places while poking at the front with his main army and Axslav's decision making and poor multitasking can't stand a chance against MajOr's ridiculously good decision making and great multitasking. At the end of the day, MajOr won, but he had to micro his ass off to get that win (it's actually really great play by him that's exciting to watch, especially since even the casters can't keep up with his fantastic dropship micro.
I don't want to make this sound Terran favored, as really late game TvP is a crazy Microfest that I think is pretty balanced, but in a big engagement, as a Terran you need to be able to EMP in the right places to negate your opponent's spellcasters while at the same time, stim, stutterstep, and control your entire army perfectly or else it will die to whatever you miss with your EMPs or else your somewhat fragile bioball dies to the Protoss army.
Protoss, at the same time, must also land feedbacks, storm, a-move the bulk of their army, and drop Forcefields, which, if your sentries are spread out you have the ability to drop a good amount of them. Granted, forcefields are pretty difficult to use, but I've played games where even without them I have died to a Protoss ball. If you really have trouble using Forcefields I'd be fine with Sentries being given to Terran in the next patch ^^
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Here is something interesting to think about: WIll the hellion nerf make TvT mech less viable?
I don't know the answer to this question, but I hope is "No".
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EPT
